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The Democratic candidates need to argue over the best way to improve health care coverage and settle on a party position before Iowa. Let them have a health care insurance summit in September to sort this out. Come to an agreement and stick by it. Make it clear to the…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Behold the flaming liberal, which devours its own if it strays too far from the nest! Right now, the best thing Donald Trump has going for him is the divided Democratic Party. The most left-leaning could hold sway…
Read More »My friend and mentor Charles Nikitopoulos of Lowell, Mass., passed away a few days ago. His obituary is here. I want to share my thoughts about what he meant to me as well as to the community and university of which he was a part for decades. He came to…
Read More »My friend Renae Lias, a former colleague from UMass Lowell, is reporting on the presidential campaign in New Hampshire. Renae is a communications professional who has worked in state government and on government relations for higher education. She attends local events in N.H. and exchanges updates with a small group…
Read More »My new collection of poems is published by Brendan Gaylord of SuperLargePrint.com, a specialty publisher of books featuring extra-large print, twice the size of the large-print books available in public libraries, for people with sight challenges. Brendan takes books and parts of books that are in the public domain, meaning…
Read More »I told my co-blogger Dick Howe that I would write a series of posts about the 2020 presidential campaign because everything is connected: national-to-local, coast-to-coast, global-to-regional. When I lived in Lowell I walked across Highland Street to the Rogers School, the James P. Scondras Memorial Gymnasium, to vote in every…
Read More »There’s an interesting event coming up this Saturday night. It’s the debut of Lowell Storytelling which is the creation of Lowell’s Laura Frye. Saturday’s performance will feature six local residents sharing a true story of each of their lives in Lowell. The storytellers will be joined onstage by Renard Boissiere…
Read More »“In the Valley of Poets” is an article by co-blogger Paul Marion in this month’s Merrimack Valley Magazine. Before surveying the nine famous poets and writers profiled in this article, Paul writes “There is a case to be made that our river valley is extraordinary, if not unique, among national…
Read More »Yesterday at noon 80 people gathered at St. Anne’s Church on Merrimack Street in Lowell to listen to and participate in a public reading of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” a speech originally delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852 to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery…
Read More »“The New Plantation” by Jason Trask Review by David Daniel Rich, wise, and powerfully told, this is the best memoir about teaching that I have read in a long time. What gives it freshness is the author’s recounting of his experiences as a high school teacher in a “school run…
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